The Bradley Era officially begins for U.S. nat'l team

	His 'interim' label removed, Bob Bradley can finally coach the U.S. national team without worrying about his immediate job security. AP
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Like it or not, the Bob Bradley Era of the U.S. national team officially begins this week, as the 23 players he called in for the CONCACAF Gold Cup report to camp on Monday.

Since the announcement two weeks ago that Bradley was the permanent head coach, soccerphiliacs like me have debated endlessly as to whether the move was a good idea. Did U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati miss an opportunity to sign a big-time, big-money, (big-ego) foreign head coach?

The marquee names originally bandied about had the bloggers and message-board posters tittering like little girls at a Disney princess convention. But with apologies to Rick Pitino: Jürgen Klinsmann is not walking through that door (my SI.com colleague Grant Wahl promises to find out why). So let's just let it go.

And remember one cool, head-scratching stat: No team has won the World Cup with a foreign coach. (Admit it, right now you're scratching your head and going back through the World Cup-winning coaches.)

Before you start scoffing, yeah, I know Bradley is not going to lead the U.S. to the World Cup trophy. That's a given. But the stat should give the Bradley/Sunil bashers a little pause.

Then again, as Wahl reminded me, the stat about foreign coaches never winning the World Cup has been touted before: by none other than Steve Sampson, the last interim U.S. skipper made permanent.

Sampson was out of his league when he "led" the U.S. to a last-place finish in 1998. That performance -- and all the back-room he-said-he-said shenanigans -- pretty much set U.S. soccer back a decade. So maybe that head-scratching stat is more like a head-shaking stat.

That gets me to a larger point about Bradley -- and about American coaches, in general. This is a very different soccer nation, and one major difference is that American coaches now have experience coaching grown men.

Sampson's only head-coaching experience before he got the job was at the college level, where he lorded over teenagers who just wanted to keep their scholarships. Sure, he served as Bora Milutinovic's assistant for one year, but Bora's assistants were as impotent as Al Gore during the Clinton years.

Yet, suddenly the federation thought Sampson was qualified? Suddenly he knew how to deal with grown men with opinions and egos and personalities and financial concerns? Men who were not beholden to the coach for scholarship money?

The problem was that there really weren't any Americans who had coached men at a very high level. That's all changed. Bruce Arena, before taking over the U.S. team, spent two years coaching D.C. United -- and showing a deft ability to manipulate massive personalities, like that Marco Etcheverry, whom he benched early on, to get the best out of them.

Bradley has nine years of professional coaching experience with Chicago, New York and Chivas USA. He's dealt with superstars, young guns, big egos, and plenty of internal conflicts -- all good training to be a national-team head coach. A permanent one.

This summer, Bradley's got his hands full with the Gold Cup and the Copa América. Playing the likes of Mexico and Argentina doesn't equate with friendlies against Denmark's J.V. team or the hapless Chinese national team, the Americans' opponent this weekend.

The permanency of Bradley's position means he should be able to relax, try out new things, test new players and think about the big picture aiming toward 2010. But he can't do that, thanks to King Sunil. Actually, that's one of Gulati's best assets: For all the criticism, he's an insanely competitive man who expects his coaches to win every time.

And so Bradley has called in a bold team with all the big guns present and accounted for. He's making a statement at the Gold Cup: Win now.

I like it. The fans will like it. Sunil should like it. And if he wins in style, it'll put to rest all those pesky debates. No more columns starting with "Like it or not..."